The new Team GB Olympic kit for London 2012 has had a mixed reception, but it's the athletes wearing the kit that matter, not what they look like, writes Mike Walters

So Stella McCartney's kit for Team GB's athletes at London 2012 has not been greeted with universal approval. Who cares?

When Jessica Ennis comes into the home straight, with a heptathlon gold medal in the balance, millions of Brits are not going to give two hoots whether Stella's modern take on the Union Jack has incorporated enough red trim.

When Sir Chris Hoy is going at full pelt around the velodrome, chasing that pizza delivery boy on a scooter in the keirin, not many of us are going to be sidetracked by the predominance of midnight blue in the design.

And when David Beckham leads Team GB's footballers into battle, nobody is going to give a monkey's about his dandy red boots based loosely on Dorothy's footwear in the Wizard of Oz.

The Olympics is not a fashion show. It is about who runs fastest, jumps highest, throws projectiles the furthest or topples into the water with more artistic merit than a belly-flop.

And if Team GB's athletes go to their starting blocks with reservations about chevrons, go-faster stripes or Stella's shades of blue, we have probably picked the wrong people to fly the flag.

Only in Britain could we become so obsessed in sport with issues which are best left on the catwalk.

If the blessed Stella had one eye on replica kit sales when she came up with her bohemian rhapsody in blue, let market forces be her judge.

Personally, I can't see legions of middle-aged, overweight men waddling around in high summer wearing ill-fitting athletics vests so they can look like Team GB. Football cornered the chav market long ago.

But the concerto of yelping from phone-in clots, keyboard warriors and chatroom chumps about the kit our athletes will wear at London 2012 reveals something about our psyche as a nation.

Every time England release a new football kit, usually just in time for another let-down at a World Cup or major championship, the latest twist to the Three Lions' uniform turns into the biggest feeding frenzy since a man performed wondrous tricks with five loaves and two fishes.

Leak the new design, and it is treated like a breach of the Official Secrets Act; but when you actually get your hands on the shirt, and some fashion 'expert' has sprinkled coloured stars on the shoulders as a tenuous nod to multiculturalism, it's rubbish.

Even at club level, new shirts are now being used as a measurement of success. Kenny Dalglish could win two cups in his first full season back on the throne at Liverpool, but he has batted away awkward questions about their stumbling form at Anfield by claiming kit deals can be just as important as Premier League points. You couldn't make it up.

Now cricket is jumping on the bandwagon, too. Not only have red flashes started appearing mysteriously on the virginal white flannels worn for Test cricket, but England have separate kits for one-day internationals and Twenty20 thrashes. None makes them hit the ball further or bowl straighter.

At the rugby World Cup, England did not perform abysmally because those stupid skeleton numbers on the back of their shirts peeled off like car stickers. They came home in low esteem because they treated the tournament like a stag weekend.

So to sum up: Britain may not win as many gold medals in London as the 19 they stockpiled in Beijing, but don't worry - Stella's kit is an absolute story, luvvies; England won't win Euro 2012 because they are going to choose a manager at a raffle before they board the plane, but fear not - the Three Lions crest in red will be a vote-winner on retail parks; England's batsmen still can't play spin with conviction, but their cutting-edge shirts will keep them at No.1 in the Test rankings; and all over South Africa, dwarves vulnerable to being flung across bars have gone into hiding because our stag weekend attaches are heading for the Cape with their car-sticker numbers.

Doesn't it make you feel proud to fly the flag?

Barmy prices for the Barmy Army

Not for the first time, England cricket fans following the team overseas have discovered the price of Test match tickets has been hiked 500 per cent the moment they set foot on foreign soil.

Barmy Army diehards in Sri Lanka have found they are being charged five times more than spectators attending the previous Test series staged on the spice island, against Australia.

It is not the first time England's sizeable travelling support have been treated like cash cows in distant lands - Barbados springs to mind - and being fleeced rotten is a perverse reward for the holidaymakers who prop up many Test nations with their patronage.

Can you imagine the outcry if a nation with huge travelling support - let's say India - pitched up at Lord's to watch Sachin Tendulkar bat, only to find the England & Wales Cricket Board had jacked up ticket prices (already steep at around £60 a pop) to £300 a seat, simply to cash in on a captive market?

The Indian supporters would cry foul, and quite possibly cry racism. And they would be absolutely right.